The daylight hours began to decrease after the summer solstice on June 21.

Normal daily summer temperatures also are on the decline. We have begun our slow slide toward
fall.

The normal high for July 28, for example, was 85 degrees. On the next day, it dropped to 84
degrees, and by the end of August, it will be down to 82 degrees, said Mike Kurtz, a meteorologist
with the National Weather Service in Wilmington.

In mid-July, the normal daily low peaked at 66 degrees. By mid-August, it will be down to 64
degrees, and by the end of the month, 62 degrees.

“Normal” temperatures are based on the average of daily temperatures over the previous

30 years. They are also adjusted a bit every decade.

The amount of daylight and our normal daily temperatures are both slowly decreasing. Summer is
beginning to get a little long in the tooth, but we don’t have to panic just yet. It seems that
school is beginning earlier and earlier in August. When I was young, we never started classes until
after Labor Day. We were also out of school by Memorial Day.

Part of the reason for the later start and earlier finish was that many students in small-town
schools had to help with chores on the family farm.

Football camps are also underway — high-school practice sessions start Monday — and that really
makes me think about fall.

The moon will be full on Aug. 20 and is called the sturgeon moon.

That’s when Great Lakes tribes knew the fish would be fat and abundant. They would dry the fish
and store it to eat in the winter. American Indians also called the August moon the moon of the
green corn because this was the month to eat field corn, and a time for great feasting in the
villages.

Roasting field corn to eat was still a practice when I was growing up in the middle of the last
century. Sweet corn is a relatively modern food.

The Shawnee word for roasting ears was
weskupimi.

The Indians would dig a trench and burn wood in it to create a bed of hot coals on which they
roasted the corn.

Hal Borland wrote in his book
Twelve Moons of the Year that we should be thankful to the Indians for providing us with
corn: “The corn was theirs in the beginning; we came late to the feast.”